Michael has become the long-heralded Singularity, much less of a mutant than those who desire such a transformation hope to become themselves, but a mutant nonetheless. The insertion of nanowork into every cell of his body, into his genome, has in some ways made him more gifted than all other human beings. At the same time, he’s at risk of becoming so different from other men and women that he will have no life in community with them. The internet and the millions of computers associated with it, the virtual reality that therein exists and that will become more vivid in the years ahead, is not a reality at all, and to live in such a fabrication is to be buried alive without the release of death. Desperate and empty and confused people might choose such an existence. Such a choice will lead not to Shangri-la, but to a vortex of madness. Avatars do not make a community; they are shadows of people, not people. Mile by mile, Michael more fully understands the truth of the future that could overtake him, and he is chilled to his core. Nina needs him, and John needs him. Michael needs them even more than they need him. His commitment to them must be complete, at the risk of a second and permanent death, if he is to have a hope of a life in true community with others.
HORSEMEN
Bearing no light, Aleem and Kuba and Hakeem and Carlisle and Jason and Speedo are born out of the dead trees like a final fall of spoiled fruit.
Before them, buildings slab the clearing, darker than the night and without detail, large but giving the impression of greater size than they possess, magnified by their mystery.
Aleem is reminded of a cool video game in which the ultimate sequence is set in a ruined castle where the Princess of Time lies bespelled in a secret redoubt, during the last hours of the world. She alone has the power to turn back the clock to an age of peace and plenty. As a player, you can choose to be Prince Endymion, in which case your goal is to find the princess and wake her so that she can live in the world to save it. Or you can be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Pestilence, War, Famine, or Death—who are seeking the princess to murder her and complete the destruction of the world. Because the weapons given to Pestilence and Famine take longer to obliterate someone, Aleem has always chosen to be either War on a red horse or Death on a pale horse. The horses look like powerful stallions, but they are really machines equipped with all kinds of kick-ass weapons. With his skill at devising strategies and tactics, with his keen reflexes, Aleem routinely runs up such a kill score of knights defending the princess that Prince Endymion is doomed, the princess remains asleep, and the world ends in a most satisfying frenzy of rats and bats and bursting bombs.
Here, no princess awaits him. Just maybe one uppity bitch who needs to be brought to her knees, apologize, plead for her life, and be buried alive with the boy she’s turned into a hopeless pussy. As satisfying as burying her alive would be, Aleem knows that he might have to forego that pleasure because of the need to deal with the SUVs. Although Kuba has hoped to use Nina for a while, he’ll have to be satisfied to wet his combat knife in mother and son and fantasize the sex later.
So much to think about. So it is when you’re the king wolf in the pack, everyone relying on you. If the vehicles won’t start, then wipe them down to eliminate fingerprints. When the smartphones are retrieved, if at least one is functioning, Aleem will call someone to drive here and take the crew home. Otherwise, Jason can hustle into town and find a public phone. Come morning, report the vehicles stolen, blame a rival gang. If the eight of them were never here, they don’t need to explain Nina’s Explorer. Anyhow, no one but Aleem’s homeys know John is his son. Once Nina was knocked up and Aleem didn’t want to deal with that, she was ashamed to have fallen for his sweet rush, a gangster like him, and she told no one who the father was. If an eager homicide dick or a green and high-minded prosecutor smells something, Aleem has a friend who is also a friend of the district attorney; the DA is a reasonable man who knows the value of time and will not waste his or that of his office on cases that can’t—or shouldn’t be—proven.
As the six men stand in the rain, looking at the complex of buildings, Jason Jones reveals that he has been thinking about the situation just as Aleem has been. “Say we find her.”
“Say,” Aleem encourages him.
“We come to teach her a lesson, take the boy, make him into a righteous brother. That it?”
“She can’t be taught,” Aleem says.
Kuba reminds them of a key fact of life. “A bitch can diss a man only so much, then he can’t say he’s a man no more iffen he still takes any shit from her.”
“That be truer than true,” Carlisle agrees.
Jason says, “So we pop her and take the boy?”
“We kill ’em both,” Aleem says.
For a long moment, the only sounds are the rain falling and the wind blowing and the skeleton trees creaking their dead joints.
Speedo breaks the silence. “You a hard man, Aleem.”
“That news to you?”
“I always known,” Speedo says. “Just not how hard.”
“You better know how hard.”
“I got it now.”
“He ain’t my son no more. It’s too late for him to be. She made him over into a trick poodle.”
“It’s a tragedy,” Kuba says.
Jason is concerned about the logistics. “So we pop a couple caps, then what we do with two stiffs?”
“We get my Aviator runnin’，” says Hakeem, “we could tie ’em to the roof rack.”
Carlisle disapproves of levity in this situation. “Whoever you tryin’ to be, Hakeem, you for sure ain’t no Kevin Hart or Dave Chappelle.”
“Can’t leave two stone-dead here with our wheels,” Jason says.
“We call Modeen and Lincoln to come get us,” Aleem says. “They bring plastic sheets and tape, wrap her and him, take ’em with us. We set our dead wheels on fire, say the Crips or MS-13 stole them. Why they drove here and burned them—who knows?”
Speedo wants to prove he really gets—and approves of—how hard Aleem is. “Back home, call Hector Salazar, bring the meat to him.”
Hector—of Salazar Marine Services—owns two substantial boats. He has a taste for taking risks of all kinds, a talent for evading authorities, and no moral compunctions whatsoever.
“Hector he takes the bodies out to sea,” Speedo continues, “chops ’em into chum, feeds the sharks.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jason says.
“Only thing,” Kuba says, “nobody’s gonna pop no caps, ’cause then we gotta throw away a gun has a bad history and maybe gotta wrap up loose brains and skull pieces. A knife don’t have no history like a gun. And done right, it’s neater.”
“It ain’t just a plan,” Hakeem declares, “it’s an episode of The Sopranos.”
“Three teams,” Aleem says, “two men to a building, till we searched ’em all. Remember the bitch has herself a piece, a trey eight, and she knows how to use it.”
Jason and Speedo each has a flashlight, so Aleem takes one for him and Kuba.
They move away from the trees, toward the buildings, one man short of being the Magnificent Seven, like in that old Western Aleem has watched several times. Even though they’re only six, they have an important advantage the seven didn’t possess, which is that they aren’t to any extent whatsoever restrained by a foolish sense of community values, by honor, by pity—or by anything, really.